Town Council to discuss townhouse requirement changes

The Strasburg Town Council is set to discuss changes to the town’s unified development ordinance during its meeting today.

The discussion comes days after Town Council members failed to come to an agreement about similar ordinance changes. Last week, members debated about changes to parking rules for townhouses and about how many townhouse units can be allowed in a single building but did not reach a consensus.

Currently, developers are allowed to build four townhouses in a single building, but the developers of the proposed Cedar Valley development at 33227 Old Valley Pike have sought to increase that number to eight.

In advance of the meeting, Strasburg town staff has adjusted its recommendations in ways that could allow Town Council members to reach an agreement on today.

First, it got rid of the proposed changes to the parking requirements. Lee Pambid, the town’s planning and zoning administrator, said that the elimination of the parking requirements would not significantly affect the proposed Cedar Valley development.

“It doesn’t really affect them as much, given the layouts we’ve seen so far,” Pambid said. “They are still proposing to have the overflow parking. That is still a requirement.”

In addition, the town staff proposed allowing for between four and eight townhouses in a single building for planned development, while only allowing between four and six townhouses per building anywhere else.

Last week, some council members expressed concern about seeing a large number of buildings with eight townhouses.

“This addresses the concern of the potential proliferation of 8-unit buildings throughout Town while permitting the applicant to move forward with design, as the property (the Cedar Creek development) is currently zoned Planned Development,” the staff report states.

In addition to those changes, the town staff proposed eliminating a requirement that developers include garages in buildings with five or more townhouses. The Planning Commission had recommended that change as a way of ensuring that residents could easily move trash from the back of their townhouses to the front, but Pambid said they would also limit the amount of flexibility developers would have.

“They might not necessarily be able to provide floor plans for additional rooms if they’re forced to do garages,” Pambid said. “So it has primarily to do with the floor plan.”

Town Council could vote on the proposed changes during their meeting today. Town Manager Wyatt Pearson said that the town staff “gave council the option of voting or tabling it in our action item report, so it’s whatever they really want to do.”

If Town Council does vote to approve the proposed changes, the discussion would not need to return to the Planning Commission.

The Planning Commission previously recommended that Town Council approve changes that would allow all developers to build eight townhouses in a single building, but that would require that buildings with five or more townhouses have garages in each townhouse. The Planning Commission also recommended changes to the townhouse parking requirements.